


Letters from the Atlantic

by iamlongstockings



Series: Rhythm of My Heart: A Mericcup Anthology [3]
Category: Brave (2012), How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Diplomacy, Drabble Collection, Eloping, F/M, Mericcup, Selkies, Summer Camp, Swordfighting, War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-29
Updated: 2020-09-13
Packaged: 2021-01-24 00:47:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21329461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iamlongstockings/pseuds/iamlongstockings
Summary: A collection of drabbles. Various prompts, all Merida/Hiccup.
Relationships: Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III/Merida (Disney)
Series: Rhythm of My Heart: A Mericcup Anthology [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1476083
Comments: 2
Kudos: 21





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Named for the song of the same name by The Arcadian Wild.
> 
> Migrated over from FFN.

**Prompt: Answers  
Word Count: 92**

She could nae take it any longer. She had to know. Not knowing was putting her on edge and everyone was suffering the wrath of a worried woman.

Her head held high as the queen her mother had raised her to be, she swept down the halls of DunBroch Castle and announced her presence to the guards. As they pulled open the heavy oak doors and she entered the chamber where the war council gathered, she put on her sternest face.

"Ah want answers."

She had to know if Hiccup was alive.

xxx

**Prompt: Team  
Word Count: 92**

She was a fierce, passionate woman by nature, full of untamed fire and a thirst for adventure. She was strong, and affectionate, and just. A queen to be admired by all, even her rivals. And she was his. Not in an ownership sort of way – she'd have stuck him with every arrow within her reach if he ever suggested such a thing, but they were partners. A chief and a queen, bound to one another by more than just an oath.

They were a team. And a damned good one at that.

xxx

**Prompt: College  
Word Count: 89**

"Mah mum wants me ta go to some hoity toity private school in the states." She'd told him with a sigh of frustration. "Ah don't know why Ah have to study politics. The whole thing is bollocks."

"Can't have you socializing with miscreants now, can we?" He'd joked.

"Oh aye, might catch a case of free thought."

If only he'd tried harder in classes. If only she'd fought harder against her mother's influences. Then perhaps their college lives would have seen a little more of one another in them.

xxx

**Prompt: Ticklish  
Word Count: 100**

He couldn't help but to run his hands across her fair, freckled skin. She was a beautiful creature, her hair as red as flame and her skin quick to burn in the summer sun. And as he ran his fingers up from her elbow to her shoulder, and then down her side to the curve of her hip, he smiled. But before he reached her hip, she shivered and pushed his hand away.

"Don't." She said, almost giggling. "Tha' tickles."

"Is that so?" He asked, mischief playing across his face.

"Don't ye dare." She warned, trying to hide her smile.

xxx

**Prompt: Detention  
Word Count: 100**

It wasn't his fault. He was naturally clumsy and uncoordinated. He was weak and bad luck oriented. But none of the injuries he acquired or afflicted on his classmates were intentional. He was just unlucky. He didn't deserve this.

So as his gym teacher shoved him into the detention room by his collar, Hiccup sighed in exasperation.

But as he took his usual seat beside the fiery girl with a mass of curls as red as her temper was hot, he decided that he couldn't complain.

He'd never have gotten to know her if it weren't for his bad luck.

xxx

**Prompt: Immortal  
Word Count: 100**

It must have been hard for him – to watch her grow older while he remained as he always had. Sure, she'd raised three children, all his, but to watch her age without him must have broken his heart.

It was a painfully sad existence, what Jack had, doomed to forever watch the people you love grow old and die before your very eyes.

And as he pressed the back of his wife's hand against his lips, he couldn't help thanking the gods that neither he nor Merida were immortal.

That meant he'd be able to join her in Valhalla eventually.

xxx

**Prompt: Queen  
Word Count: 100**

A crown atop her fiery red curls, he gave her his signature smirk as he dipped down into the lowest of bows as he could manage on his wooden leg.

"My queen,"

So she hit him in the shoulder with the book in her hands as he made to stand up.

"Ah told ye not to call me that."

And with that same mischievous, playful smirk that she so loved, he replied. "And I told you I had no intention of stopping_,_ _my queen_."

"Jings, crivens, help ma boab." The queen said. "So help me, Hiccup o' the Hairy Hooligans."


	2. Saltwater Kisses

** **Prompt: ** ** **Elopement** ** **  
Word Count: ** ** **350**

They were fifty-some leagues across the ocean before she allowed herself to think of the distress that her actions had caused for her family. Her mother would have her hands full, soothing any political tensions that arose from her sudden elopement.

But despite the guilt she felt, she kept her eyes forward, towards the future. Towards their freedom.

Her father would pursue them, but they had a Night Fury, and could easily outrun even his fastest ships.

It ached, knowing she’d never see her family again, but she just couldn’t do what they were asking of her. She’d tried to fall in love with one of her politically viable suitors, but she’d failed. She’d never taken to them like she’d taken to him, the blacksmith boy with the strange aversion to kilts.

He’d quickly become a favourite of hers since he’d arrived in DunBroch three years prior, and somewhere along the way, their friendship had turned into something more.

It had turned into the one thing she’d been determined to find in one of the young lords.

Love.

The pain was unimaginable.

How could she possibly spend her life with one of the young lords when she’d fallen so deeply in love with someone else? Parted by an invisible barrier forevermore, moving through their lives as parallels, not partners. She couldn’t do it. Spending her life away from the one she loved and bound to one she did not was a fate that even she was not brave enough to face.

So they’d changed their fates and run away.

She’d had to abandon her duty to her family and to her people in order to fulfil her duty to herself, and she’d left her family to deal with the fallout and clean up the mess. _Her mess_.

Her heart ached at the thought of the trail of destruction she seemed to leave in her wake, she rested her head against her lover’s back, her salty tears burning her wind-chapped cheeks as she gave in to her grief.

The damage was done, and she’d just have to live with the consequences.

  
  


* * *

****Prompt:**** **Kisses******  
Word Count: ******400**

The first time she’d kissed him, they couldn’t have been a day over four or five. They were playing knights and castles in the courtyard. She’d insisted they have a proper duel, and then whacked him so hard with a wooden practice sword that it had sent him sprawling onto the cobbles. He’d scraped his knee and begun to cry, so she’d kissed him on the forehead, just like her mum or dad always did whenever she managed to hurt herself. He’d stopped crying.

The next time she’d kissed him, they’d been just a few months shy of thirteen, and he was visiting on a diplomatic mission with his father. He was gangly, awkward and constantly trying to get his father’s attention. Or her father’s attention. Or anyone’s attention, really. She’d teased him about it, and about how little he seemed to resemble a viking. She had perhaps been a little meaner than she ought to have been, and he’d told her as much, then avoided her for three days. Later, she found him sulking and after kissing him by way of apology, had run away and avoided him until he left.

The third time she’d kissed him, they were seventeen. He’d changed. He was more confident now, and the hint of facial hair had felt rough against her lips as she stood on her toes to kiss him on the cheek. Before he had time to respond, she’d thanked him for walking her back to the apartment she was staying in during her visit to Berk, and bid him goodnight.

The next time she’d kissed him had been after Stoick’s death. Twenty and directionless, he’d somehow ended up flying all the way to DunBroch. He was there to deliver the news of his father’s death to some of their most treasured allies, he’d said, but she knew him better. So she’d held him and stroked his hair while they both cried, and she’d kissed his forehead like she’d done once upon a time, when they had been much, much littler.

Today, she kissed him in a new way. Today, she was to kiss him before an audience. No longer would their kisses be a secret shared only between the two of them when they were alone but for the other’s company. Both dressed entirely in white, today their kisses would become something shared between a man and his wife.

  
  


* * *

** **Prompt: ** ** **Selkie** ** **  
Word Count: ** ** **300**

“We could run away together, you and I,” She’d suggested one morning as she sat on a large rock by the water’s edge, his head in her lap as she ran her fingers through his thick brown hair.

“That sounds nice,” he had replied, kissing her fingertips before twining his fingers with hers and looking up at her with those beautiful green eyes of his. Those eyes that always made her heart skip a beat. They were as green as the wild – somehow both the green of the forests and the green of the oceans at the same time. Untamed and adventurous, and a shade of green that somehow felt like home, no matter how far she ventured. As he smiled and gently tucked a stray lock of fiery hair behind one of her ears, she ran a thumb over his lower lip, then leaned down to kiss him, savouring the salty taste of dried seawater on his lips. She was going to miss this.

She was going to miss _him_.

But Princesses didn’t marry Selkie boys, even if they were uncommonly handsome, or exceedingly kind, or quick-witted and clever, or the sons of Selkie Chiefs. Princesses married Lords and Princes, and Selkie boys seduced the unhappy wives and daughters of fishermen.

He’d offered to marry her, if that was what she wanted. He’d even offered his seal pelt cloak to her as a token of his love and his loyalty. But despite the ache in her chest, she had refused him. She couldn’t force him to keep his human form, and take the one thing from him that she herself had fought so hard to keep for herself - freedom.

And so, pushing aside the pain, she resolved to memorize the taste of his saltwater kisses while they lasted.

  
  


* * *

** **Prompt: ** ** **Camp ** **Counsellor ** **& Tech Support** ** at a ** **Theatre Camp – suggested by ** **ohlooksheswriting ** **(whose ** **RotBTD ** **Hogwarts AU is AMAZING and ** **you should check it out** **)** ** **  
Word Count: ** ** **300**

Running a hand through his auburn hair, he settled into the worn desk chair behind the lightboard for stage five. Next to him, the redhead half-sat, half-leaned on the desk next to the board, rested her clipboard against her lap and sighed in exasperation.

She had to be the unluckiest camp counsellor in the history of the camp. What was it about the kids in her cabin? Somehow she’d managed to get saddled with the most technologically illiterate youth in the entire camp. Since the first lightboard seminar, they hadn’t gone more than three days between calls to stage five.

At this point, she just called or texted him directly instead of calling the tech department.

“I think you must’ve set some kind of record,” he mused as he fiddled with several dials and switches, trying to discern the cause of the latest technological issue with the lightboard.

“I’m starting to think this room’s cursed,” She said, drumming her knuckles against the clipboard in her lap. “That, or the wee devils are doing it on purpose.”

He nodded. He had been wondering the same thing. Even combined, the other four stages hadn’t had half the number of technological issues and bizarre glitches that stage five had.

“I can talk to Gobber about having another training session for the lightboard.” he suggested, but she only shrugged.

“If ye think it’ll help.” The last three seminars certainly hadn’t. If anything, each training session only seemed to invite stranger, more complicated errors. It was a losing battle. “But I s’pose then I wouldn’t have an excuse to call ye.”

Surprised green eyes met her blue ones, which seemed especially bright against the pinkish flush in her freckled cheeks. He grinned that awkward, lopsided smile of his. “I’m sure you could think of _something_.”

  
  


* * *

** **Prompt:** ** ** Dancing** ** **  
Word Count: ** ** **300**

Sidestepping with her dance partner in time with the metallic song that seemed to echo about them, she couldn’t help but grin. Her vibrant curls bounced as she whirled away from the freckled brunette, then spun back to face him once more. He scrunched up his nose teasingly at her improvised steps, but didn’t miss a single beat as he returned to meet her where she’d left him, the music swelling as they reconnected.

As beads of sweat rolled down her back, she wondered if she’d ever had more fun at a ball, and found that she couldn’t think of a single dance that had been even half as thrilling as this one. She’d certainly never had such an invigorating partner.

Noticing the mischievous glint in her partner’s eye, she adjusted her stance, and couldn’t help but giggle gleefully as they danced his new choreography, moving with a new pattern of quick, rhythmic steps. He had a surprisingly graceful manner for a man with only one leg – certainly something she hadn’t expected when he’d first come to court. He’d impressed her so many times since he’d arrived to treat with the Kingdom of DunBroch. At first, it had been the sarcastic wit and wry sense of humour that always made her chortle at the most inconvenient of times. Then it had been his cleverness and creativity – traits that she had never expected to find in some Viking boy, of all people, and yet here he was. Then again, she supposed she’d never expected to see a Viking diplomat either. And then, tonight, he’d impressed her with his agility and the almost mischievous way he tested boundaries.

Because when Queen Elinor had suggested that the headstrong princess honour their guest with a dance, she had most certainly not meant with _swords_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Constructive criticism always welcome. :)


End file.
